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Getting By With a Little Help From Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton walks with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of Calif. as they arrive for a meeting with the House Democratic Caucus, Wednesday, June 22, 2016, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

The Hil­lary Clin­ton cam­paign’s de­cision to in­vest ad­di­tion­al money in­to a co­ordin­ated ef­fort, even in states where she has little chance of win­ning, is a wel­come sign for House and Sen­ate Demo­crats con­cerned about their abil­ity to cap­it­al­ize on a dis­astrous Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial nom­in­ee.

Clin­ton cam­paign man­ager Robby Mook, a former DCCC ex­ec­ut­ive dir­ect­or, an­nounced the new in­vest­ments in a con­fer­ence call with re­port­ers Monday. That fol­lowed a New York Timesre­port last week on a House Demo­crat­ic con­fer­ence call on which As­sist­ant Minor­ity Lead­er Jim Cly­burn ex­pressed con­cerns about Clin­ton pulling re­sources out of states she had put away, and a story in Politico that de­tailed how the DSCC and DCCC had each re­ques­ted at least $5 mil­lion in early Septem­ber to help win back the Sen­ate and House, then re­ceived con­tri­bu­tions total­ing half that.

Their anxi­ety was war­ran­ted, as vul­ner­able con­gres­sion­al Re­pub­lic­ans had been able to cre­ate sep­ar­a­tion from the top of the tick­et without even dis­avow­ing their nom­in­ee. Even after Don­ald Trump’s lewd com­ments on an Ac­cess Hol­ly­wood hot mic were leaked, two re­cent na­tion­al polls found Demo­crats lead­ing on the gen­er­ic con­gres­sion­al bal­lot by just 3 points—which in­dic­ates a neut­ral en­vir­on­ment and no sign of a wave.

It didn’t help that as the Clin­ton cam­paign sought to pull away from Trump, it painted him as someone so far out­side the main­stream that he was un­re­cog­niz­able even to Re­pub­lic­ans. That was the mes­sage at the Demo­crat­ic con­ven­tion, and it was re­in­forced in early Septem­ber by a Clin­ton ad fea­tur­ing Re­pub­lic­ans de­noun­cing Trump.

Trump has all but ceased reach­ing out to swing voters at this point. But to the Clin­ton cam­paign’s cred­it, their strategies have worked and she has now pulled out to a double-di­git lead in a couple re­cent na­tion­al polls—des­pite the can­did­ate’s own un­pop­ular­ity and vul­ner­ab­il­it­ies. If Clin­ton wins the pop­u­lar vote by a mar­gin sim­il­ar to Pres­id­ent Obama‘s 7-point tri­umph in 2008, down-bal­lot Demo­crats should have a good night.

"The Trump administration is putting pressure on Senate Republicans to crack down on Democratic efforts to delay its agenda, fueling talk about the need for rules reform among Republicans on Capitol Hill. Republicans are in discussions with Democrats about bipartisan changes to Senate rules to speed up consideration of President Trump’s judicial and executive branch nominees, but if that effort flounders — as similar ones have in the past — they’re not ruling out unilateral action."

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